The road to Utopia is the road to Hell. — Communism and socialism are the opiates of the intelligentsia. — The left, in its eternal and futile quest for "equality", is more than willing to abolish liberty and sunder fraternity.

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Politics, Sophistry, and the Academy

By “politics” I mean the business of acquiring and applying governmental power, which involves — among other things — persuading the electorate, either directly or through advertising and the utterances of political allies and friendly “opinion elites” among journalists and academicians.

“Sophistry” is more complex. Its meaning has evolved, as described at Wikipedia:

The Greek word sophos, or sophia, has had the meaning “wise” or “wisdom” since the time of the poet Homer and originally was used to describe anyone with expertise in a specific domain of knowledge or craft. For example, a charioteer, a sculptor or a warrior could be described as sophoi in their occupations. Gradually, however, the word also came to denote general wisdom and especially wisdom about human affairs (in, for example, politics, ethics, or household management)….

In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly at Athens, “sophist” came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others: “Sophists did, however, have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.”…

Plato is largely responsible for the modern view of the “sophist” as a greedy instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning. In this view, the sophist is not concerned with truth and justice, but instead seeks power.

Here, I am concerned with sophistry in its modern, political sense: the cynical use of language in the pursuit and application of power. In a word, propaganda. Josef Pieper (1903-97), a German Catholic philosopher, has much to say about this in Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power (for which I thank my son). There, Pieper notes that propaganda

can be found wherever a powerful organization, and ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their “weapon”…. (p. 32)

A bit later, Pieper says that “the abuse of political power is fundamentally connected with the sophistic abuse of the word” (p. 32). But this is nothing new under sun, and should come as no surprise to anyone who has even a superficial knowledge of modern history and understanding of politics.

Less evident, I believe, is the tragically corrosive confluence of politics and sophistry in the academy. To push the metaphor, what was a trickle in the middle of the twentieth century has grown to a wide, roaring river of academic dishonesty in the service of political ends.

About the corruption of the academy, Pieper writes:

[T]he term academic expresses something that remained unchanged throughout the centuries, something that can be identified quite accurately. It seems that in the midst of society there is expressly reserved an area of truth, a sheltered space for the autonomous study of reality, where it is possible, without restrictions,to examine, investigate, discuss, and express what is true about any thing — a space, then, explicitly protected against all potential special interests and invading influences, where hidden agendas have no place, be they collective or private, political, economic, or ideological. At this time in history we have been made aware amply, and forcefully as well, what consequences ensue when a society does or does not provide such a “refuge”. Clearly, this is indeed a matter of freedom — not the whole of freedom, to be sure, yet an essential and indispensable dimension of freedom. Limitations and restrictions imposed from the outside are intolerable enough; it is even more depressing for the human spirit when it is made impossible to express and share, that is, to declare publicly, what according to one’s best knowledge and clear conscience is the truth about things….

Such a space of freedom needs not only a guarantee from the outside, from the political power that thus imposes limits on itself. Such a space of freedom also depends on the requirement that freedom be constituted — and defended — within its own domain. By “defended” we mean here not against any threat from the outside but against dangers arising — disturbingly! — within the scholarly domain itself…. (pp. 37-8)

Pieper’s depiction of the academy may seem, at first glance, to be unrealistically romantic. But Pieper is merely setting forth an ideal toward which the academy should strive. If the academy would renew its dedication to the ideal, it would banish and bar the sophists who lurk within and seek to infiltrate it.

Where are the sophists most likely to be found in the academy? In such pseudo-disciplines as “women’s studies,” “black studies,” and the like, of course. But also throughout the liberal arts, humanities, and social sciences, where artistic forms, economics, history, literature, and sociology serve (to name a few) serve as vehicles for those who would destroy the foundations of Western civilization in the name of “liberation,” “equality,” and “social justice.” Even the sciences are not immune, as evidenced by almost-obligatory belief in anthropogenic global warming, and the need to subscribe to that belief or be ostracized. More generally, there is the selection bias that works against the hiring and promotion of those who come from schools that have a reputation for dissenting from left-wing academic orthodoxy, or who have themselves overtly dissented from the orthodoxy. Especially damning is the fact of dissent based on hard evidence and impeccable logic — especially damning because it is especially threatening to the orthodoxy.

The last word goes to Pieper:

“Academic” must mean “antisophistic” if it is to mean anything at all. This implies also opposition to anything that could destroy or distort the nature of the word as communication and its unbiased openness to reality. In this respect we are well able to pronounce the general principle and at the same time to to be very specific: opposition is required, for instance, against every partisan simplification, every ideological agitation, eery blind emotionality; against seduction through well-turned yet empty slogans, against autocratic terminology with no room for dialogue, against personal insult as an element of style … , against the language of evasive appeasement and false assurance …, and not least against the jargon of the revolution, against categorical conformism, and categorical nonconformism…. (pp. 38-9)

Comments & Correspondence

Now that this blog is in hiatus, I have closed comments on all posts. If you wish to communicate privately, you may e-mail me at the Germanic nickname for Friedrich followed by the last name of the great Austrian economist and Nobel laureate whose first name is Friedrich followed by the 3rd and 4th digits of his birth year followed by the usual typographic symbol followed by the domain and extension for Google’s e-mail service — all run together.

On Liberty and Libertarianism

What is liberty? It is peaceful, willing coexistence and its concomitant: beneficially cooperative behavior.

John Stuart Mill opined that "the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." But who determines whether an act is harmful or harmless? Acts deemed harmless by an individual are not harmless if they subvert the societal bonds of trust and self-restraint upon which liberty itself depends.

Which is not to say that all social regimes are regimes of liberty. Liberty requires voice -- the freedom to dissent -- and exit -- the freedom to choose one's neighbors and associates. Voice and exit depend, in turn, on the rule of law under a minimal state.

Liberty, because it is a social phenomenon and not an innate condition of humanity, must be won and preserved by an unflinching defense of a polity that fosters liberty through its norms, and the swift and certain administration of justice within that polity. The governments in and of the United States have long since ceased to foster liberty, but most Americans are captives in their own land and have no choice but to strive for the restoration of liberty, or something closer to it.

Who can restore liberty? Certainly not the self-proclaimed libertarians who are fixated on Mill's empty harm principle and align with the left on social norms. Traditional (i.e., Burkean) conservatism fosters the preservation and adherence of beneficial norms (e.g., the last six of the Ten Commandments). Thus, by necessity, the only true libertarianism is found in traditional conservatism. I am a traditional conservative, which makes me a libertarian -- a true one.

Notes about Usage

“State” (with a capital “S”) refers to one of the United States, and “States” refers to two or more of them. “State” and “States,” thus used, are proper nouns because they refer to a unique entity or entities: one or more of the United States, the union of which, under the terms and conditions stated in the Constitution, is the raison d’être for the nation. I reserve the uncapitalized word “state” for a government, or hierarchy of them, which exerts a monopoly of force within its boundaries.

Marriage, in the Western tradition, predates the state and legitimates the union of one man and one woman. As such, it is an institution that is vital to civil society and therefore to the enjoyment of liberty. The recognition of a more-or-less permanent homosexual pairing as a kind of marriage is both ill-advised and illegitimate. Such an arrangement is therefore a “marriage” (in quotation marks) or, more accurately, a homosexual cohabitation contract (HCC).

The words “liberal”, “progressive”, and their variants are usually enclosed in quotation marks (sneer quotes) because they refer to persons and movements whose statist policies are, in fact, destructive of liberty and progress. I sometimes italicize the words, just to reduce visual clutter.

I have reverted to the British style of punctuating in-line quotations, which I followed 40 years ago when I published a weekly newspaper. The British style is to enclose within quotation marks only (a) the punctuation that appears in quoted text or (b) the title of a work (e.g., a blog post) that is usually placed within quotation marks.

I have reverted because of the confusion and unsightliness caused by the American style. It calls for the placement of periods and commas within quotation marks, even if the periods and commas don’t occur in the quoted material or title. Also, if there is a question mark at the end of quoted material, it replaces the comma or period that might otherwise be placed there.

If I had continued to follow American style, I would have ended a sentence in a recent post with this:

What a hodge-podge. There’s no comma between the first two entries, and the sentence ends with an inappropriate question mark. With two titles ending in question marks, there was no way for me to avoid a series in which a comma is lacking. I could have avoided the sentence-ending question mark by recasting the list, but the items are listed chronologically, which is how they should be read.

This not only eliminates the hodge-podge, but is also more logical and accurate. All items are separated by commas, commas aren’t displaced by question marks, and the declarative sentence ends with a period instead of a question mark.